Yeah I'm really looking forward to playing FF4 again with it's updated graphics and "real" version. I was never into handheld systems myself, but I got a 3DS XL a couple months ago and besides Dark Souls & Hearthstone it's all I've been playing. I picked up more RPGs than I know what to do with, almost done with Zelda - Link Between 2 Worlds which is freaking amazing. Also got Dragon Quest 6, 9, FF 3, 4, Etrian Odyssey 4 and some other stuff... Oh Monster Hunter 3U is badass. It seems DS or PSP is the way to go for a lot of good classic RPGs.
Edit: Oh yeah there's also some very Symphony of the Night type Castlevania games on the DS, Dawn of Sorrow was excellent although it felt a bit short in the end.

The whole game is much more character oriented than the first game and I found them to be far less bland. If you played Portrait of Ruin, then you'll know what I mean.

A Link Between Worlds was one of my favorites of 2013 (along with Pokemon X and Super Mario World). If only it was a bit harder, it would've been the best of the year easy

They knew EXACTLY what I wanted in a new Zelda: more LttP :V

Agreed, the original SNES Zelda is still my favorite of all time. Which Super Mario are you talking about? 3D Land or one for Wii U? I hear 3D Land is awesome and I still really want to play New Super Mario Bros 2 on 3DS.

Any idea how much time you put into Avadon? I'm only about 10 hours in and I'm not sure if/when I'll ever finish it as I only play a couple hours a week, but I've really enjoyed it so far.

Oh crap, I forgot to mention it was 3D World. Land was from 2011 (it was a 3DS launch title I think?).

Land gives you a lot of lives. Last I played I was on world 6 or so and had like 130+ lives.

Those god damn beautiful, beautiful sales... I have around 85 games on Steam right now due to the past three big sales. And I've only gotten around to about half of them. At least this way I won't run out of stuff to play. Although I would love some new PS4 games sometime soon too.

I've put fortry and I don't think I'm much past halfway, though I wouldn't know. Then again, I have a bad tendency to fire up a game, play a little and then forget it in a window in the background so I might include some hours of idle time.

Damn, the PS4 still outsold the Xbox in March despite Titanfall...

I'm pretty sure hours and hours of playing Doom when I was ~10 shaped my taste in music.

And I loved the moment revisiting Doom when I was about 16 and thinking "holy fuck, that's Alice in Chains! No wonder I always loved that riff..."

I re-installed Escape the Pit after reading your comment and so I'm playing that whenever I'm bored of New Vegas. I've already found myself trapped in a tough encounter, trying to clear out an ancient crypt, the boss in there just wastes my party every time. Such a fun game, though. It's amazing how quick time goes by as you explore the nooks and crannies of the game world, getting to know all the npc's etc. My only gripe is that some of the more routine encounters get a bit tedious. The boss fights are usually tough, and even though you might get wasted the first time, you never feel like you need to grind. Instead, you always get the feeling that you just need to adjust your strategy a little bit this way or that. The tough fights are truly rewarding.

EDIT: I was about 34-40 hours into Avadon when I got stuck, and I'm fairly certain I was only maybe a third to halfway done... It's hard to say, though. It didn't feel like I was close to the end at all.

I've been going back and playing the old Sonic games (Sonic the Hedgehog through Sonic & Knuckles). I don't know how much of it is me sucking at the games or that they're genuinely very difficult, but man, I'm getting my ass kicked. I really have to take it pretty slowly through each Zone to make any progress. Going out of my way for 1-ups is essential too. However, even with these precautions, I don't make it through more than four Zones per session. Oh well, these games are still a blast to play, although I find I have to drown out the game music with something else, lest those melodies get lodged in my head for days.

Those games do have a good degree of difficulty to them. I can't even beat Sonic 2 nowadays; Wing Fortress Zone kicks my ass

Yeah I recently played Sonic 2 and just got utterly hammered. A lot of those levels have to do with muscle memory and anticipation it feels, too many bitches popping out of walls.

Good.

Been playing through Ico for the first time and it's pretty great. I love the art and atmosphere, and I love that when the shadow monster thingies attack you feel really helpless and weak. It's kind of frustrating how some puzzles are solved by doing actions that take forever to figure out how to do (took me something like 30 minutes just to figure out I could swing back and forth on chains by pressing and holding a certain button) but somehow I also kind of like how it literally never tells you how to do anything at all. The gameplay kind of feels similar to stuff that's been done in quirkier indie games in recent years, but this must've been pretty darn idiosyncratic and totally out of left field back when it came out. Not that it doesn't still stand out, though.

Hey, HeWhoIsNotBatman, have you played Shadow of the Colossus already? Because if you haven't, then you really ought to go for that one after finishing Ico.

I have not, but I have that as well (I have the PS3 disc that has both in HD versions). I'll be playing that soonesque; might knock out New Super Mario Bros. Wii and God of War II before I get to it, though.

I literally finished Shadow of the Colossus again like two hours ago. It and ICO are easily among my favorite games. They're the gaming equivalent of Burzum in how minimalistic and evocative they are. I have a big post somewhere in this thread drooling over the differences in both games, but if I were to review them like how I review music, they'd both get 100%.

My only other 100% game? Fucking Ape Escape.

Yeah, I first played through ICO back in 2005 and it was a wonderful experience, instantly becoming one of my own favorite games as well. Shadow of the Colossus is great but I've still not gotten past the fifth or sixth colossus - real life stuff always sidetracks me and I end up putting the game down. I have to admit there's something about the concept of the game that feels a bit thin, even if the gameplay and the atmosphere and everything are incredible, so that also cuts into my enthusiasm for it a little bit. If there were more of a...semblance of a story, I guess, it might provide more motivation to all that happens. Maybe later in the game things start to develop a bit more?

There is a story, but if you're expecting it to be fully fleshed out without the aid of your own imagination you're going to be disappointed.

Literally every single negative review of SotC I've ever read completely misses the point, and that's usually one of the big complaints. The story is minimalistic and ambiguous on purpose, and you're left to fill in the backstory and the meaning of the ending pretty much entirely in your own imagination. Plus, if the little subtleties that make themselves apparent as the game progresses doesn't count as some of the most flawlessly executed elements of subdued storytelling, then nothing does.

It's definitely a case of emotion over exposition. The experience and the journey are what make the story, not any of the dozen lines of non-Dormin clue dialog.

Actually, if you liked ICO, you should like SotC plenty as well. It has a lot of the same elements that make the two games work.

It's not a matter of the story being obvious; as I said, ICO is awesome and the minimal story there didn't bother me a bit. Same with Dark Souls. The difference (from what I've played of SotC up till now) is that in the SotC I feel like the story (whatever there is of it) was entirely built around the gameplay concept - essentially fabricating a thin pretext for a bunch of badass gigantic monster fights - whereas in ICO I felt there was more of an actual tale unraveling, an emotional impetus that ran deeper.

But like I said, maybe I just haven't gotten far enough into SotC and it develops further as the game progresses. I don't get the feeling that the creator of ICO would make a shallow game, so I assume there's more to it later on.

I finished Ico earlier today, and it was really great. The ending played out much different than what I was expecting and was really, really wonderful. My favorite part had to be

Ultra-simple little piece of gameplay there that would be completely unintuitive unless you've developed the emotional attachment to the characters that the whole game was going for in the first place. Really great stuff.

Looking forward to Shadow of the Colossus, but as I said I'm gonna wait a bit on starting that and knock out a couple other games first.

Wow. So the latest reboot of Thief is a mere two months in his life and is already at 66% off (additional discounts may apply). Any buyers?

Ahahahaha well there will definitely be times in Avernum when you get completely steamrolled by a boss and just need to go kill other shit for a while. Mechanics-wise, if you're lower level than a mob, you start incurring penalties in combat and they start getting bonuses. If your level disparity is too great, it'll be essentially impossible for you to win. There were a few times I was able to work my way through the whole dungeon only to have to give up on the boss and come back later after doing some other stuff. For example the encounter in the Slith fortress where the Slith commander summons a crapton of slimes is just brutal, and the Aranea Queen has fire spells that will hit for like 200 damage if you try to fight her as soon as you can.

Anyway that phenomenon doesn't really necessitate "grinding", because Avernum is an open-world game. Instead you can just go work on progressing through other areas and other quests for a bit and try again after you've gained a couple of levels. While Avernum's balance was somewhat uneven in parts due the non-linear nature of the game, I found it actually pretty fair when averaged out over the course of like 100 hours. After the incredible disappointment that was Skyrim's final boss, it was incredibly gratifying to play an open-world RPG with final bosses that still managed to be incredibly challenging. I've been gaming for around 20 years now, and I have NEVER felt the sense of relief and satisfaction after having beaten a boss that I did after defeating Emperor Hawthorne. FUCK that guy.

Just finished The Swapper. An awe-inspiring thought-provoking sci-fi puzzle game with beautiful goddamn music and graphic design! First time I started the game I think I spent 5 whole minutes gazing at the menu screen and listening to the sublime music. Also, this reminded me a whole lot of this.

GET IT.

Word. About the only puzzler in recent past that I genuinely enjoyed experiencing.

Indeed. I should say though that I would've liked having a sort of newgame+ with the same (or different) puzzles made tougher with the addition of, say, patrolling security drones. Maybe even a multiplayer element, although it could be problematic to implement considering the body swapping mechanics.

Yeah Ico is more consistently story driven. Shadow of the Colossus sort of has the Monster Hunter method of story telling. In Monster Hunter you sort of imagine the ecology and evolution for each monster you see. In SOTC each boss tells its own story in a way on top of the narrative with the main character. So Ico does have better minimalistic storytelling than SOTC cause SOTC seems to rely on two angles instead of a smooth method.

But SOTC does have an interesting story and I'd much rather SOTC than long cutscenes.

Finally beat Starcraft 1 and Brood War without cheats. First time I ever did that, and I've had the game for over ten years. Original game had a couple hard missions, but god damn was Brood War frustrating. Latter battles of the campaigns felt like morale killers, and the mission "To Slay the Beast" was grueling. Probably the most difficult. HotS was a cakewalk in comparison.

Speaking of Avernum, Steam has a bundle with Avernum 4, 5 and 6 on sale right now for $2.39.

So I finally get this new laptop, 8 times faster than my old PC. Boot up CS 1.6, game is running smooth finally, and for some reason I can only fire sporadically. I tried using both the touchpad and the mouse, but it only seems to register ~30% of the time. I tried resetting the mappings to default and it doesn't help. Always something...

Try turning off vsync or disabling/enabling raw mouse input.

Wow yeah, I always felt like the last level in Brood War felt like a rom hack joke or something. Enemies everywhere, everywherrrrrrrrre.

Red Orchestra 2 is free for 24 hours, as in you "buy" it within the 24 hour window and you keep it forever. Kinda like that L4D2 deal that crashed the Steam servers.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/35450/?snr=1_5_9__205

You sure? Isn't it usually with these "free during x" multiplayer game thingies that you can't play after the promo runs out?